There are workbenches... Then again, THERE ARE WORKBENCHES!

Every woodworker needs a good, solid workbench and the time came for a new one in the Shigshop. While thinking about benches and contemplating designs, a few new ideas came along on how to accomplish the build.

The basic function of a hand tool woodworking bench is to provide an easy method to securely hold work pieces. Size, weight, rigidity, and clamping ability accomplish this goal.

Elements found in a typical roubo style bench with a split top, wagon vise, and leg vise became my objective. These benches won't rack when hand planing and with the bench tipping the scale at over 300 pounds, sliding on the floor, if any, will be minimal. The top, being solid wood and over 4" thick, means no deflection when performing any kind of normal woodworking operation. With strong shop built vises, split top and various hold down holes, there is great versatility to hold work.

As anybody that has built one can attest, these benches and vises are fun to build and work on. And, with the simple, sturdy homemade vises, their work holding capability is substantial.

Overview of the bench and vises

Based on similar designs and a few ideas of my own, here are some features of my bench and vises:

The bench is built from commonly available construction grade wood (douglas fir in my case).

A pinless leg vise held parallel by a simple chain mechanism

A wagon (tail) vise whose handle does not extend during opening and closing.

The vises use sealed bearings for ultimate smoothness and are very strong.

The vises are simple to build and easy to install.

A gap down the middle of the bench provides unlimited clamping ability.

A "gap stop" acts to fill the gap - it prevents tools from falling through, and can act as a work stop by simply raising it off it's notches and sliding it over a bit. Removing it allows a long continuous clamping edge.

A 3 drawer cabinet utilizes it's top as a shelf that is easy to reach.

A sliding deadman helps support long boards and provides more clamping options.

The vise hardware was shop built using easily found acme screws, nuts, bearings, hand wheels and other hardware. They have gone through a few iterations to come up with final designs that are strong, smooth, simple to build, and look good on the bench. The bench breaks down into 8 main pieces:

2 - top slabs - the front slab has the wagon vise installed

2 - leg assemblies

2 - long stretchers

1 - leg vise

1 - 3 drawer cabinet

Having the bench break down makes it very manageable to build in a one person shop - I had no trouble performing the various operations to build it. For instance, I was able to run each slab through my thickness planer with no help and with the biggest slab being 11.5 inches wide, even a small lunchbox style planer could have been used.

After using this bench, I can't imagine requiring more versatility and power to hold a work piece. The concept of marrying very old bench designs with newer technologies can produce a dream woodworking bench that is simple to build, will last a few lifetimes, and can easily be moved around as shops are upsized, and sometimes even downsized.

It's one heckuva workbench! Build one and do it soon!

A video showing some of the features on my roubo style bench.

Plans are available.

There are a bunch of nice woodworking benches and vises you can buy. There are also many books on work benches with plans on how to build them, but I wasn't able to find any good plans for what I had in mind. The manufactured vises I was most interested in were very expensive, yet at the same time appeared to be fairly simple. The designs I came up with are not difficult to build, inexpensive, and are working quite well.

Much satisfaction is had from using tools you build yourself - never before did I have the work holding capability provided by this bench and pair of vises.

The bench

The bench is awesome. It has a cabinet, deadman, and gap stop. The cabinet is nice as it provides a little additional shop storage, and it's top also doubles as a shelf - as a bonus, it requires a little less bending over to use.

Here's a couple pictures of the bench with the vises, cabinet, deadman and gap stop.

I built the bench from douglas fir. It's top is 4-1/4" thick, 8 feet long and 2 feet wide. Big mortise and tenon joints were used on the base and the main components can easily be disassembled.

Most of the drawer cabinet is also built from douglas fir that is glued and screwed together with rabbet, dado, and butt joints. The top is a glued up panel about 1" thick and the drawers are finger jointed with maple sides and runners which makes them easy to build, durable and don't require expensive slides. I finished the cabinet with a thin coat of satin olive paint that will patina nicely.

The gap stop was kept short so there will always be part of the gap available for clamping on each end. Being short, it is also more manageable when I want to remove it.

Oh, and if the bench looks backwards, it's because I'm a lefty. The plans are for righties, but us lefties are used to transposing that kind of thing.

To keep the chop parallel with the leg, I have tested a couple different pinless designs and have settled on the chain design. This design is strong and easy to install, requiring only minor modificaions to the bench.

Credit for the development of the design goes to Jim Ritter at Ancora yachts who spent over a year getting all of the kinks out. My design is similar to Jim's. Jim had a supply of chain parts professionally machined and has made them available. He has a few different kits that include all parts necessary to add a chain mechanism to a leg vise with a parallel guide (the horizontal rail extending from the bottom of the chop). His parts look nice and are easy to install. Based on my correspondence with Jim and various forums and reviews I have read, I recommend them for my bench design. They will make the vise easier to build and not cost much more than having to buy and machine all of the parts yourself.

Although I built my own chain parts and have included drawings and instructions for those in the plans, I might eventually get a kit from Jim.

The Dogsled vise

Here's a video of the dogsled vise in action.

The vise was built from approximately $50 in materials. The woodworking was very simple and the metal work was comprised of turning some shoulders on an acme screw, boring holes in a cast iron handwheel, and drilling a piece of 1/4" x 3/4" x 12" steel for a rail (that piece could have been hardwood). The acme screw shoulders can easily be ground on a bench grinder (see my free bench grinder table plans).

Some wagon vise designs can be very finicky to install and set up. This one was simple and straightforward, after the bench and vise components were built, it took less than 30 minutes to install.

The plans and instruction set are very detailed. Click on the links above for more information.

More on pinless leg vise designs

I've built and tested a couple pinless leg vise designs. A nice one came from Lars at www.lllars.com, which is simple, and very promising.

Using his basic design, I built a prototype and worked with it a bit, going back and forth with it and the chain, and eventually decided to stick with the chain - for a number of reasons:

In my implementation of Lars' design, wood fibers in the roller guides were compressing while riding against the rollers, causing the chop to go out of parallel with the leg. Dense hardwood or steel for the roller guides would more than likely solve that issue.

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